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 y y Steinbeck’s
 accounting, Weedon Island, in Florida’s Tampa Bay,might once have been one of the foulest placeson earth.An apparent wasteland in which nothing but man-groves grew, it resisted improvement. But in the bustling optimismof post–World War II America, no land or person was beyond re-demption. A rehabilitative program was undertaken. Weedon Is-land was sliced up as part of a statewide mosquito-eradication effort. Trenches were dug to improve the flow of water from the bay through the mangroves,giving fish better access to the wetland.Themore fish there were, the more mosquito larvae they would eat. In
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Introduction
 We suppose it is the foul odor and the impenetrable quality of themangrove roots which gives one a feeling of dislike for thesesalt-water-eating bushes. We sat quietly and watched the movinglife in the forests of the roots, and it seemed to us that there wasstealthy murder everywhere. On the surf-swept rocks it was afierce and hungry and joyous killing, committed with energy andferocity. But here it was like stalking, quiet murder.The roots gaveoff clicking sounds, and the odor was disgusting. We felt that we were watching something horrible. No one likes the mangroves.Raúl said that in La Paz no one loved them at all.
— 
 John Steinbeck,
The Log from the Sea of Cortez
 
a 1958 photo the island looks like a checkerboard, with each line asaltwater ditch.But like so many ideas that involve human alteration of the land-scape, there were unintended consequences,and for mangroves they  were all negative. The spoil from the ditches was simply moundedalongside them, creating a network of dikes that were a few feethigher than the surrounding ground. Since the tide never coveredthese mounds, they were colonized by invasive species such asBrazilian pepper and casuarina pine, which subsequently spreadthrough the wetland.The dikes and ditches also interfered with thenatural surface flow of water—the slow, percolative trickling acrossthe sediment that is the mangrove swamp’s circulation system. Anestimated 14 percent of Tampa Bay’s wetlands died as a result of these earthworks.Grandwetland-improvementschemesalsolefttheirmarkonotherparts of Florida.In the 1960s,canals were dug and roads constructedinthewatershednorthoftheTenThousandIslandsNationalWildlifeRefugeaspartofa230-square-kilometer(89-square-mile)realestatedevelopment known as Golden Gate Estates.The project was to bethe biggest subdivision in America. It was designed in two parts,northern and southern.The northern tract was built;then the south-ern part went up for sale.Seventeen thousand people bought land inSouth Golden Gate.They were all suckered.South Golden Gate has been called one of the classic swamp-land-in-Florida scams. It’s become a standard joke: “If you believe
that,
 well, I’ve got some swampland in Florida I’d like to sell you.”South Golden Gate was that swampland, where, for years, real es-tate sharks showed gullible buyers the lots in the dry season, clos-ing the deals before the land became flooded in the wet.Few houses were ever built, of course. The site became a haven of fugitives,poachers, and drug runners.Is it any wonder that wetlands—but especially mangroves—get abad rap? To anyone who hasn’t explored them, mangroves are littlemore than impenetrable coastal thickets that cling to the edge of 
Introduction
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solid land and block access to the ocean. Just an obstacle and a nui-sance. Which is why, not just in the development-crazed state of Florida but on coastlines around the world, they have been up-rooted, torched, and bulldozed so that the land can be put to betteruses. Mangroves are sacrificed for salt pans, aquaculture ponds,housing developments, port facilities, tourist resorts, golf courses,roads,and farms.And they die from a thousand lesser cuts:oil spills,chemical pollution, sediment overload, disruption of their delicate water balance.Keepers of the dismal statistics of nature’s decline say that in thepast four decades, between a third and a half of the world’s man-grove forests have been laid waste. These saltwater rainforests arenow one of the most rapidly disappearing ecosystems on the planet. They are critically endangered or approaching extinction in 26 outof the 120 countries that have them. The outlook for the next half century and beyond is no brighter.In addition to the existing threats, there looms a potentially moredisastrous problem:rising sea levels.Standing as they do at the land’sfrontiers, mangroves will be the first terrestrial forests to face theencroaching tides.Spreading inland in sync with rising seas will notbe an option in many places, for human development behind themangrove fringe has cut off the line of retreat. Mangrove forestshave become hemmed in on all sides, and the walls are closing in. These are hard times for trees that are used to hardship. Con-sider where they live: rooted in the land and bathed periodically by the tides,they occupy a death zone of desiccating heat,airless mud,and salt concentrations that would kill an ordinary plant withinhours. But through a suite of adaptations—snorkel-like breathingroots, a desalination system in their roots, props and buttresses tohold the trunk upright in the soft sediment,seeds that fall from thebranches as ready-sprouted propagules—these botanical amphib-ians have mastered the art of survival in an extreme environment. They don’t just survive, they flourish. The forests they form areamong the most productive and biologically complex ecosystems on
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 Let Them Eat Shrimp

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